Porsche Parcher

Have you ever felt like your brain is just incapable of thinking positive thoughts? You are constantly plagued by self-doubt.

You put yourself down. You never feel good enough?

You’re not alone. Porsche Parker started her long battle with depression and self-hate in third grade.

“I remember an assignment I had in school. We had to write something about how you want your future self to be. I was struggling with the weight thing.

I thought I was fat and was always going to be fat. I hated myself. I didn’t know how to even begin to think about my future.”

Her circumstances as a young girl did nothing to foster confidence or self-love. Her dad worked more than he was home, her parents had a toxic marriage, and kids at school constantly picked on her.

“I had a woe-is-me attitude about everything. I felt like I was stuck in that situation, and I was never going to get out. I learned to stuff my emotions because no one was going to listen to me.”

For years, Porsche struggled with those feelings until she eventually began to entertain thoughts of suicide.

“I have a specific memory from middle school where I realized I didn’t want to live anymore. I remember coming into my room after school, and I was done. I don’t remember what it was, but I didn’t want to live anymore. But I think I was too scared to go all the way with it.”

Porsche found solace in using physical pain to numb her emotional pain.

“I would take safety pins and dig into my wrist. For me, it was numbing out the pain of my life. I liked to see the scars because I always had that pain inside. The physical pain gave me something to focus on that was not the emotional pain.”

She carried that habit all the way into her adult life. Even after graduating from college with two degrees in violin performance and American Sign Language interpretation and getting married, Porsche felt worthless.

“I just did what I knew. I followed my parent’s advice, went to college and picked something I thought I might be okay at and hoped for the best. My marriage mirrored my parent’s marriage. We were fighting every single day. I internalized all that pain, and I would go off swearing at my husband, screaming at the top of my lungs. It was a battle every day.”

Porsche’s husband, Micah, didn’t know that her cutting habit continued into their marriage. One day, he found a knife that she kept in the nightstand next to their bed. His first reaction was fear that Porsche planned to use the knife to hurt him. In fact, he came very close to serving her with divorce papers.

“That’s how I heard about First Steps To Success, the live training seminar by Dani Johnson. My thought was okay, something has got to get better. Even if just one thing changes, I will be better off than I am right now.”

Porsche didn’t expect the event to heal her emotional pain, but she did hope it would help her succeed in business and generate a real income. She and her husband were only making $15k a year, living on food stamps and over $20k in debt. She thought making money and getting them out of their financial pit would raise her self-worth.

“I learned so much more than how to succeed financially. It took me a few years to figure out why I was struggling so much in business, but as I applied the strategies I learned at First Steps To Success, I saw results happen. In the first two months in a new business, I made the company’s leaderboard. My husband is now my very best friend. I’m learning how to communicate. I don’t bottle things up anymore. I actually talk about my feelings.”

“During one of the sessions, I just felt this release. I stopped struggling with the depression. I stopped with the self-mutilation. I stopped hating myself. I realized, “hey, I am worth it. I can be successful. I don’t have to beat myself up all the time.”

Porsche and her husband, Micah, are thriving in their marriage. He has a new job that came with a significant increase in income. They are no longer on food stamps, have paid off $33k worth of debt and bought their first home.

“My entire life has changed. We have been really faithful in small things, and it is paying off in big ways.”

Porsche experienced the encouragement, coaching and confidence-building she needed to overcome her depression and start breaking the mold at First Steps To Success.